“God is still in the business of coming down to earth: to this cubicle, this email, this room, this house, this job, this hospital room, this car, this bed, this vacation. Any place can become Bethel, the house of God. Cleveland, maybe. Or the chair you’re sitting in as you read these words.” John Ortberg

“We begin in ego consciousness, imagining that the union with God we seek is far off. After all, ego consciousness is the subjective perception of being a separate self that has to find God, who is perceived as being other than one’s self. But as ego consciousness yields and gives way to meditative awareness, we begin to recognize the surprising nearness of God. God is already here, all about us and within us—the very source, ground, and fulfillment of our being. But subject to the limitations of ego, we tend not to experience the divine mystery of who we are, created in the image and likeness of God. We do not directly realize the God-given Godly nature of ourselves in our nothingness without God. This is why we meditate: that we might awaken to God’s presence all about us and within, as Saint Augustine phrased it, closer to us than we are to ourselves. To practice meditation as an act of faith is to open ourselves to the endlessly reassuring realization that our very being and the very being of everyone and everything around us is the generosity of God. God is creating us in the present moment, loving us into being, such that our very presence is the manifested presence of God. We meditate that we might awaken to this unitive mystery, not just in meditation, but in every moment of our lives.” James Finley

“in Him we live and move and exist”
Acts 17:28

Moving From the Head to the Heart

• Do you often fall into thinking of God as “far off”, as Someone hard to find? (God is infinitely above us and decisively Other–but is that the whole story?)
• Have you given serious consideration to the possibility of the “surprising nearness of God?” …that you bear God’s image? …that in God you “live and move and exist?” …that as a believer, God has chosen you as his preferred dwelling place?
• Consider that each moment God is “loving us into being.” What would that entail?

Abba, daily may I awaken anew to your presence, lovingly at work in me and others–the source, ground, and fulfillment of our being.

For More: Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God by James Finley